Top MBA startups: Which budding businesses have raised the most cash?

(Poets&Quants) — These days, you can’t walk the hallways of a business school campus and not overhear excited conversations among MBA students about their business plans and startup ideas. Talk of using the MBA experience as a place to fine-tune an idea, recruit partners, gain access to seed capital, and finally launch a startup is becoming as ubiquitous as discussions about forthcoming job interviews at McKinsey & Co. and Goldman Sachs.

MBA students today have greater interest in entrepreneurship than ever before, says Bill Aulet, an MIT Sloan professor who also serves as the managing director at the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship. “What I see today with young people is a desire to take control of their destinies,” he says. “We expect our MBAs to come out with the spirit of a pirate and the discipline of a Navy SEAL. And I think we are only seeing the beginning.”

And what a beginning it is. MBA founders are routinely raising billions of dollars for their new ventures. What kinds of ideas are getting funded? Which schools have been most successful at graduating entrepreneurs with the best ideas?

For the second time, Poets&Quants has tracked the most successful MBA founders and has come up with a newly updated list of the Top 100 MBA startups. The list is based solely on funding—the most accessible apples-to-apples comparison for these still-private enterprises. If a startup rocketed to success and was acquired by another company, we used the amount it was sold for in lieu of funding raised.

This year, competition among the top 100 intensified. Last year, when WildFire topped the list after its acquisition by Google, a nine-figure funding amount would have secured a top two place. This year, the top eight companies all had at least $100 million in funding.

But the competition wasn’t exclusive to the top of the list. From the time we put out our first casting call for startups in December to our publishing date, the cutoff jumped from $1 million to the $2.4 million it is now. What’s more, more than half of the top 100 MBA startups have raised more than $15 million each.

Once again, the top spot went to a company that was sold to Google. Last year’s third place finisher, satellite imaging company Skybox Imaging, reached an agreement with the search giant last August to be acquired for a whopping $500 million. SoFi, the student loan financing outfit, zoomed from sixth place last year, with $77.2 million in investor money, to $399 million of funding today. Rounding out the top three was last year’s 13th placed startup, RelateIQ, which was sold for $390 million to Salesforce.

Every single startup in the top three includes founders from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Stanford boasts a total of 25 startups on this year’s rankings, down from 32 last year. But five of these startups are in the top 20. Meanwhile, Harvard Business School held strong with 34 startups out of the top 100, including nine out of the 20 with the most funding. MIT Sloan MBAs run 13 startups that made the cut, up from 11 last year. Wharton had five, followed by Michigan’s Ross, Columbia Business School, and Chicago Booth, each with three startups on the list.

This year’s list includes a diverse range of schools. From Rice University in Texas to IMD Business School in Switzerland and seemingly everywhere in between, there was big time money to be had. All told, investors poured more than $1.7 billion into startups with a Stanford MBA attached to it. Startups with Harvard MBAs raised more than $1.1 billion. All in all, the top 100 startups raised upwards of $3.8 billion.

Most of the startups make good use of the Internet, outsourcing many functions from software development to server hosting to get to market fast and cheap. The businesses themselves run the gamut, from highly sophisticated enterprises in financial services and high tech, to e-commerce outfits, mobile payment firms, and even an online physicians’ network. A couple of Yale School of Management MBAs are behind Privateer Holdings, the private equity firm that is shaping the future of the legal cannabis industry.

To find the best MBA startups, we reached out to the top 50 business schools around the world. We spoke with directors of entrepreneurship centers, and we consulted with professors who often mentor MBA entrepreneurs. The companies that made our list were founded between 2009 and 2014 and had to have at least one founder graduating with an MBA during those years.

The earliest startup on the list, No. 1 Skybox Imaging, was launched on Jan. 5, 2009. The youngest business got its start on April 15, 2014, and was the only startup in the top 100 to be launched last year.

One theme was clear among the winners: A business school is increasingly an ideal setting to incubate and accelerate a business. And given the huge sums of money being plowed into these startups, investors seem to agree.

“It was a great way for us to build out the business plan in a safe environment,” says Dan Macklin, co-founder of No. 2 SoFi, which was hatched at Stanford’s business school. “It gave us an excuse to do a lot of research with professors, with fellow students, with alumni. We really tapped into our professors and our fellow classmates to build out the business. You have access to so much experience and so much expertise in so many different areas.”

For David Klein, who stepped on Wharton’s campus to start an MBA in 2011, admission to the Wharton Venture Initiation Program was key. “After I was rejected in September [of 2011], I asked what I could improve and went back during the second admissions cycle,” says Klein. “The first feeling of being accepted is validation that you have a good idea.”

Once in the program, students have access to a working space, a community of entrepreneurs, and monthly mentoring sessions and progress reports from professors. Klein founded CommonBond, which provides student loans and was founded with two other Wharton students, Jessup Shean and Michael Taormina. CommonBond raised $2.5 million in its first year in Wharton’s Venture Initiative Program and now has more than $250 million in funding.

“There is such a robust entrepreneurial community and a real energy around starting companies at Wharton,” Klein says, who comes from a family of entrepreneurs dating back to his grandfather, who started a shoe company when he arrived in America after World War II. “There are a lot of opportunities that you can lean on or leverage to maximize the success of your startup.”

At the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, Stewart Thornhill, who also serves as the executive director of the Samuel Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, says that while an MBA is by no means necessary to startup success, it can be helpful.

“Yes, the MBA really helps with the practical side of running a business, like understanding how a business works from marketing issues to people issues to financial issues,” Thornhill says. “But you can learn all of that if you are a voracious reader with an Internet connection. The other part is the network and pedigree. Walking into an investor pitch with an MBA attached to your name gives you credentials from the beginning. And having a global network of connections and being able to contact them with a phone call is beneficial.”

Small businesses are basically saving the job market right now

There’s been a surge in post-recession small business hiring across the country, according to a new report from ADP Research Institute.

Companies with 499 employees or less accounted for 81% of new private-sector positions in January, ADP says. Expand out the time frame, and small businesses averaged 83% of new jobs in the last four months. For comparison’s sake, small businesses were only responsible for 38% of new private-sector jobs back in September 2010.

What explains the small business hiring boom? Jim O’Sullivan, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, told Bloomberg that startups have been benefitting from easier access to capital. “In general, small businesses were hurt more by the credit crunch than big firms and that headwind for the recovery has become a tailwind as the banking sector has strengthened and eased lending standards,” O’Sullivan told Bloomberg.

The recent small business blitz comes as startup owners reported their highest optimism levels in eight years last month.

This umbrella is basically impossible to lose

Imagine never leaving home without your umbrella on a rainy day. That’s what one Kickstarter project hope to make possible.

The so-called Davek Alert is an umbrella with Bluetooth technology embedded in the handle, powered by a replaceable watch battery. Users sync the umbrella to their smartphone. Then, if the distance between the two exceeds 30 feet, the phone blasts a reminder to grab the umbrella, according to the proposed project’s Kickstarter page.

Engineer and designer Dave Kahng is asking for $50,000 in contributions for the Davek Alert. With 44 days to go, the project has earned 15 backers, or just over $1,100 total. The project’s Kickstarter is slated to end on April 12.

What’s the best-funded Kickstarter project ever? That’s the Coolest Cooler, a cooler that comes with music, storage space, a blender and a USB charger, which earned $13 million in funding last year. Just this week, the Pebble Time smartwatch set a new Kickstarter record by reaching $1 million in support in under an hour.

Meet the pop culture-loving executive behind Intuit’s small business empire

Dan Wernikoff, who leads the small business arm of software maker Intuit, thinks Silicon Valleys can learn a lot from boy bands. Yes, that’s right: One Direction and the Backstreet Boys.

Boy bands, he says, appeal to the masses — and so too should software.

“Sometimes it looks like boy bands just emerge suddenly, but the reality is boy bands are highly-engineered and rigorously tested with users,” Wernikoff says. Instead of using a lab, music industry managers test boy bands at the local mall in front of screaming adolescents.

It’s a blueprint that Wernikoff follows with Intuit’s small business operations, which accounts for half of the company’s annual revenue. He emphasizes getting customer feedback in developing new products and then tweaking them.

“The more engaged users are during development, the more committed they will be to buy,” he explains. “All of the most popular consumer apps at this time are built on the contribution of others, just like all the most popular entertainers.”

Intuit, which built a huge business by selling accounting software, is having to adjust to stay relevant in a quickly shifting industry. Desktop software is rapidly becoming obsolete in favor of mobile devices and the online services in which data is saved in what’s known as the cloud.

Furthermore, Intuit INTU faces challengers on many fronts. In tax software, it competes against H&R Block HRB and TaxAct, among others. Still, Intuit remains the industry leader. Last year, it handled 29 million tax returns versus around 7 million for its competitors.

Earlier this month, Intuit suffered a black eye when Minnesota tax officials discovered fraudulent tax returns filed by fraudsters using its TurboTax software. The company had to temporarily block users across the country from submitting state tax filings and then scramble to add additional security measures. The trouble lasted less than 24 hours. But the incident and its timing in the midst of the busy tax filing season may make customers think twice about using TurboTax in the future.

Wernikoff, 43, leads a huge swath of Intuit’s business including QuickBooks Online, Payments and Intuit Partner that is responsible for $2.2 billion in revenue last year. He manages 5,000 employees with the goal of making life easier for small business owners.

“What we’re trying to do is enable them to be successful as a business,” he says.

Wernikoff, a 12-year Intuit veteran, says the types of businesses he’s working with these days is rapidly changing. Many more companies are using “on-demand workers,” such as drivers for car hailing services Ubers and Lyft. Last month, Intuit partnered with Uber to provide the company’s drivers – who are independent contractors – a pared down version of QuickBooks Online. Intuit sells the software to the drivers directly.

The version for on-demand workers doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that a small business with 20 employees would require. Since introducing a test version of the service in the fall, Intuit says that those on-demand users have entered $50 million in expenses.

“We’re thinking about how we can support those newer, emerging businesses,” says Wernikoff.

At the same time, his company must balance its innovation with the reality that many of Intuit’s small business customers – particularly those who use early versions of QuickBooks desktop software – are resistant to change. New features are important, Wernikoff says, but it’s critical to keep the original base of customers happy, too.

“That shift is letting us do different things that we’ve ever done before,” he says.

But where the company’s first crop of consumers may be change averse, Wernikoff lives for it and thinks others in Silicon Valley should be open to pop culture. He believes inspiration from the long running singing show American Idol, which creates a ready market of fans willing to buy the contestants’ music, is exactly what the industry needs..

“They don’t like the idea of pop culture,” he says. “No one wants to toss [ideas] around and talk about Kim Kardashian.”

“That’s a lot of change,” says Wernikoff for Intuit’s customers as well. But at least he’ll have boy bands, American Idol and the Kardashians to look to for answers.

Valentine’s Day is, of course, is a make-or-break period for all three — a time that sees shoppers craving chocolate and singles hoping to find a partner.

For Daniels, creating an app was a no-brainer, given her 15 years in the love business. She’s the first traditional matchmaker to make one, too.

“During that time I have accumulated a lot of dating intel,” she said on the panel. “More recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of disappointment for the apps that are on the market. I thought to myself, I’m perfectly positioned to tailor make an app that works for high-end, busy, successful professionals like my clients.”

That’s how The Dating Lounge began.

Lerner, meanwhile, has an app of his own: The Grade. He describes it as a “pretty provocative concept” geared toward empowering women to date, while clamping down on the men (or women) who act naughty.

After talking to users over the last few months, Lerner (like Daniels) said many singles are dissatisfied with the available offering dating app offerings.

“You have to be responsible for your behavior,” he said. If users are inarticulate, hostile to each other, ask for nude photos or are unresponsive on The Grade, they get booted, he added. At this point, about 10% of users have an F, according to Lerner. Those users are given tips on how to improve their behavior. If they don’t, they’re ousted.

“We’re the first app that truly holds users accountable for their behavior,” he said.

More dating apps mean higher chocolate sales, according to Chin from Godiva. The week leading to Valentine’s Day is huge for Godiva’s business, she said. It’s like the company’s “Super Bowl.”

And as the business of dating apps continues to gain in popularity, Lerner offered his views on an important trend he’s seeing.

“In dating, women kind of run the show. If you build a product and feature set that makes women happy, the men will follow,” he explained.

Shark Tank: The lost pitches

In the world of startup funding, spotting a winner is no simple task. Much of it comes down to chance. How would the judges of ABC’s Shark Tank respond to pitches from some of the most successful entrepreneurs in recent history when they were just starting out? Here’s how we imagine the conversations might have gone.

According to a recent social-media engagement study, Americans now spend more time on social media than any other Internet activity, including email. Social media isn’t going anywhere and businesses, small and large, are now recognizing their online presence is an essential part of their marketing strategy. Eight out of 10 small to medium-sized businesses now use social media to drive growth for their business, and three out of five say they’ve gained new customers through social media marketing.

There’s no denying social media is an excellent tool to interact with customers and clients, but simply posting something on social media for the sake of being active online isn’t enough. If you aren’t careful, your constant retweets and oversharing can quickly get you an “unfollow.”

These 8 habits are sure to alienate you on social media:

1. Always Selling

This is one of the worst social-media pet peeves, says Brian Paldin, CEO of the social-media marketing company, The Razzi Group. Social media is a conversation, says Paldin, and no one wants to talk to a salesman. Posting only when you have something to promote is a quick way to get your company unfriended or unfollowed.

2. Overposting

Posting the same type of messages multiple times a day is a sure-fire way to alienate your audience. Lysa Miller, owner of Ladybugz Interactive Agency in Boston, a web-design and social-media strategy agency for small businesses, recommends posting relevant content once or twice a day. No one wants to see a dozen photos a day of pizzas from the restaurant they followed on Twitter, but they may be interested in a new recipe (posted once, not three times a day).

3. Oversharing

Sharing info from other sites can be an annoyance to your followers. Avoid sharing articles from aggregate news sites such as BuzzFeed, as these don’t show any originality to your business and are shared too many times online by individuals.

“People don’t want to see a business oversharing those kinds of viral stories because they’re going to see that content from their friends,” says Miller.

4. Lack of Original Content

“Customers need to know you’re interesting enough to follow,” says Miller. Retweeting other people’s messages or posting articles from other sites doesn’t tell the consumer what your company is about and shows a lack of originality. Paldin says once every two days is a good time to retweet or share content that isn’t yours. Focus on creating original content, such as a blog post on your website or a portfolio item you can share with followers.

5. Not Having a Strategy

“Posting random links and content just to put something up is not a good idea,” says Miller. Create a calendar of posts you want to share in advance, leaving room for some last minute additions.

“When you’re messaging people, you need to know what that message is and you need to plan that out in advance,” says Miller.

The best way to create a strategy is to look at who your customers are and find out what their needs and wants are related to your business. Paldin has even done surveys for some companies in order to create a social-media strategy, asking followers to tell him the type of content they would like to see on the company’s social-media channels. When creating your social-media strategy, think about how the information you share is going to help your customers be loyal to your business.

6. Unnecessary Tagging

This is just bad social etiquette, says Paldin. “You shouldn’t be tagging people in photos or in posts that are not associated with them.” While tagging people in a picture or a post may help you to increase the post’s visibility, it’s a fast way to annoy people and will quickly get you an “unfollow.”

7. Being Disengaged with Followers

“If you’re looking to get your customers to continue to follow you, you need to pay attention to what they’re doing,” says Paldin. Since the whole idea of social media is to engage with customers, Paldin recommends following people when they follow you, like their photos, ask questions and always respond when they reach out to you. “What’s the point of having 10,000 followers if you only have two percent engagement? Wouldn’t you rather be a company with 1,000 followers but 10 percent engagement?” says Paldin.

8. Reposting Too Much

Sending the same link 10 times a day may increase your click-through rate, but it can also annoy followers who see your reposts as digital clutter. “People want to see activity when they scroll through your feeds and your comments,” says Paldin. But if the activity is all the same message, they’re going to see you as annoying.

Modern society gives some great rewards to entrepreneurs who find what people need and want, and provide it. This exchange is a huge part to the free market philosophy that has led to much prosperity (although unfortunately not for everyone). Successful business people are well rewarded for their ability to provide what society wants. Sometimes these people make for good philanthropists, even if many are still stingy with their wealth.

Charitable acts are performed without the expectation of direct financial gain, but they certainly are not without their own rewards. Here are four of the major ways that successful business people, and even you, can benefit by giving to charitable causes.

1. Building respect and a good reputation in the community.

A company’s leaders can identify needs within the community or ask prominent local organizations what they need help with, and make targeted efforts to contribute. The relationships formed between customers and prominent community members can be of great value to the company in the future. When businesses help other people, those people tend to want to support the company in return. Building a reserve of goodwill in your community means there will be people there to back you up and speak up on your behalf in the future.

A now-classic example of this is Facebook. The company’s move to the old Sun Microsystems campus in Menlo Park a few years back raised concerns from people in the community about the effect all those new Facebook employees might have on the city and its infrastructure. There were thoughts from some that it might cost the city more than help it in the long run. Facebook spent millions of dollars in the area on things like improving bike trails to reduce traffic impacts from all the new workers coming in and out of the area each day. The company also famously donated $120 million to schools near the campus, a move which generated quite a bit of positive publicity, but also the negative opinions of those who felt the social giant “bought off” the community (haters are gonna hate, as they say).

2. Making your community a better place to live.

Giving back improves a company’s image in the eyes of community members and results in a better place to live and work for the company, its employees, and the people who live there already. Fixing up local parks or donating to schools gives children of the employees better and safer places to learn and play. Donating to local nature parks gives everyone a relaxing, enjoyable area to camp or hike in.

The Facebook example applies here, too. The school donations will have an almost incalculable effect on the kids who already live in the area. Some of the East Palo Alto schools that are still receiving these donations were long-suffering elementary, middle, and high schools that had only a tiny fraction of the money, computers, and other resources that similar schools in Beverly Hills-likeAtherton had, just a few miles away. Who’s to say just how many of the kids in those schools will now lead much more successful lives because Zuckerberg opened his pocketbook?

Also, companies that give to environmental causes, or green initiatives, lead to a healthier and more beautiful environment in the immediate area. Ocean Conservancy is a good example, partnering with companies on cause-related marketing agreements to help build awareness and raise funds for their work to protect the ocean. The American Forest Foundation partnered with a company called HardWood Bargains, along with hundreds of others, to create a program with a goal to plant 50 million trees in the U.S. alone.

3. Employees respect leaders who do good.

It can be unfortunate just how little certain startup founders and other business owners properly address employee happiness. Many team leaders go through the daily motions without a thought on how to build greater employee cohesion or job satisfaction in general. If you work for a company that gives back to the community, it can improve those issues. If you make your company a positive force in the community, it can improve employees’ regard for their corporate leaders, which can only help you. It’s also simply a nice feeling and can make you more motivated to work there. The daily grind is difficult. Employees need all the motivation they can get. Good morale is essential to a successful business, and this is one of the best ways to bolster it.

4. Connections and networking.

In the hit TV series Mad Men, a highly successful character once said, “Philanthropy is the gateway to power.” Philanthropic organizations are often a who’s who of the world’s most powerful individuals. Entry into these organizations brings one into contact with these people. For an entrepreneur or businessperson, these connections are an invaluable resource. The people you know determine what you can get done and what opportunities you can take advantage of. People in these organizations tend to develop a mutual trust and respect for one another, which are essential factors in doing business.

Successful corporate leaders understand promoting public opinions that are favorable to your company, boosting internal morale, and improving the area you live in are all good reasons to make positive contributions to your community. Let’s be honest, if you grease the wheels of local politicans by donating hundreds of millions of dollars, that generally isn’t going to hurt either. All companies should make philanthropy a central part of their business model.

At a time when digital and streaming dominate debates over the future of the music industry, ZinePak co-founders Kim Kaupe and Brittany Hodak are just starting to hit a high note.

The entertainment-minded would-be entrepreneurs met in their mid-twenties while working together at an advertising agency. They were music fans with experience in merchandising, publishing, and building retail partnerships. They also knew it was an awkward moment for music lovers. CD sales were slumping. Streaming services were taking off.

But what if they could make CDs cool by investing in experiential content for superfans? What if they partnered with some of the biggest names in music and entertainment—Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Disney’s Frozen franchise—to provide existing, eager fans with limited edition merchandise? Kaupe and Hodak scored a chart-topping hit with ZinePaks, the company they founded in 2011 that produces fan club-style bundles of CDs with exclusive tracks and magazine-length booklets featuring photos, lyrics, and artist interviews.

While many of their entrepreneur peers were focusing on startups that require a lot of up-front capital—and in tech, the need to hire expensive developers early on—ZinePak stayed lean. In its first year, ZinePak grew 350% and sold over a million of its limited edition bundles. In 2013, the company pulled in $3 million in revenue.

Courtesy of ZinePak

The company focused on partnering with commercially viable stars. For Katy Perry’s latest album, Prism, there was a delightfully girly bundle of a special edition CD, nail decals, and full-color magazine. A recent Mumford & Sons concert tour ZinePak included a Field Notes-style notebook and markers perfect for an artist signing t-shirts or concert posters.

In April 2014, the company released its first-ever soundtrack ZinePak, a limited edition CD and magazine with music and interviews from the TV series, Orange is the New Black. Other soundtracks followed, for films like How to Train Your Dragon 2.

The ZinePak origin story is largely without discord. During her three-year tenure at Sony’s RED sales and marketing division, Hodak was responsible for creating and cultivating relationships with buyers at Wal-Mart WMT, Target TGT, Hot Topic, and Best Buy BBY. When she left to work in advertising, she diligently kept in touch with her contacts.

A year later, when she and Kaupe left the ad agency with $60,000 of their own savings to launch ZinePak, Hodak called her buyer pal at Wal-Mart, the largest seller of physical music. “I always tell people that was the one and only phone call I made,” Hodak says. Not only did Wal-Mart want to get behind ZinePak. The retailer wanted to be the startup’s exclusive distributor.

The Wal-Mart connection was a bridge to the next high note: signing some of country music’s top artists and performers to co-produce exclusive ZinePaks. It was the end of 2011, and the women were brainstorming new projects. The Academy of Country Music Awards was coming up. Their Wal-Mart pal wondered: why not put out a compilation of nominees to test the waters? The collection was such a hit, a number of the stars featured on the album signed up to release their own exclusive content through ZinePak.

Hodak notes that bootstrapping the company was only somewhat intentional. When she and Kaupe began reaching out to potential clients, they were met with more enthusiasm than they’d expected. Potential clients wanted to become investors and get in on the ground floor.

The women realized there was more to their idea than they’d thought and doubled down on their commitment to not giving out shares prematurely. “It’s not to say we won’t take money at a later date,” Kaupe explains. “But if we did, it’d be strategic. It would be about growth instead of about raising $5 million because I can’t pay my employees tomorrow.”

All 12 of those full-time staffers, by the way, are women. But Kaupe swears there’s no intentional hiring bias. “We take the best candidates for us,” she says matter-of-factly.

Not selling shares or taking any outside investment is the same way rock star Spanx founder Sara Blakely built her billion-dollar fortune. And while Kaupe and Hodak have approached running their company the same way, Kaupe says it took them a while to realize how the rareness of their strategy, or how to measure their off-the-charts success. According to American Express OPEN’s 2014 State of Women-Owned Businesses survey, just 2% of women-owned firms generate more than a million dollars in annual revenue.

“We kind of realized this is a very small group of people. The fact we were able to join within a year—we were incredulous.” Kaupe adds that the fact there are so few million-dollar women-led startups is “slightly depressing but keeps us motivated.” So do fans that keep ZinePaks flying off the shelves.

“All you ever hear is doom and gloom,” Hodak says, measuring the mood of the music industry. “But the superfans—those true, core fans, who have maybe two or up to 20 artists they live and die by, who go see them within 500 miles—they want to own physical products to hold in their hand to show they’re a fan. They won’t ever go away. Maybe it won’t always be records, but there will always be a need for a physical manifestation of the art musicians create.”

“We don’t look at the music industry and say it’s going down, or that this is a bad situation and we need to look at other verticals or industries,” she explains. “We say, what an awesome opportunity to make products for superfans to cherish.”

Just four months after raising nearly $28 million in its Series A round, home improvement startup Porch has announced a seismic $65 million Series B — bringing total funds raised by the 16-month-old company to more than $100 million.

A source close to the deal pegged Porch’s current valuation at roughly $500 million.

Valor Equity Partners led the latest round, and the firm’s CEO, Antonio Gracias, will join Porch’s board of directors. Other investors included Extreme Makeover: Home Edition host Ty Pennington, as well as Lowe’s, which also participated in the company’s Series A.

Porch, which links homeowners with reputable service professionals through its website and dedicated app, says revenue and membership have climbed more than 1,000 percent over the past year. The company makes money by charging contractors to promote their services across the platform.

New funds will be allocated towards Porch’s mobile app, which launched last month. Specifically, the company is planning a national rollout of the Porch Booking feature, which allows users to schedule and pay for small maintenance jobs at pre-negotiated prices directly from their mobile devices — and which is currently only available as a beta program in Seattle.

All told, Porch counts a network of 3.2 million service professionals across the country that have completed over $2.5 trillion worth of home improvement work.